


Kobayashi Maru

by mylordshesacactus



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bonding Time, Everything A Goddamn Teaching Moment In Area Family, Gen, It really only hurts if you think about it too long!, Jedi Being Mysterious, Space Chess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, you will not be able to surrender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kobayashi Maru

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I titled a Star Wars fic 'Kobayashi Maru'. I defy your false dichotomy, Internet.
> 
> Disclaimer: Barriss is twelve and knows only slightly more about Space Chess than I do. Her perceptions and internal commentary are not meant to be an accurate analysis of the game in question. @Chess Nerds please do not hunt me down and kill me. I am doing my best. Many thanks to Kablob for his beta, don't hunt him down either.
> 
> On that note, if anyone wants to follow along with the Mirialans' game, [this](http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1257910) is what's going on.

Barriss was suspicious.

It was hardly the first time her master had laid this kind of bait. She would often intentionally move a piece into position insufficiently guarded, so as to train Barriss to spot the opportunity and move to take advantage of it. She was learning to read a battlefield quickly through these games; they gave her a chance to feel out tactical advantages by herself, and learn from her mistakes.

It was just that Master Unduli wasn't normally this blatant.

It _had_ to be a trap.

Luminara couldn't possibly have missed the position of Barriss' left-hand droid, she'd just moved it a moment ago. But then, droids were somewhat erratic—more rigidly confined than the other pieces, but immune to some of the “organic” troops' limitations. Was it possible Luminara was just hoping to distract her from the droid by inexplicably moving a pawn...?

That had to be it. They were barely six moves into the game. No one in their right mind would sacrifice their Knight so early and for so little reward. There was a reason they were colloquially called 'Jedi' almost everywhere but in the Temple; Knights were the most powerful piece on the board, Luminara had to have underestimated her.

And yet.

“Master?” she said warily. The only response she received was a look of mild interest.

Very, very cautiously, she nudged her droid forward and to the left, and the soft indicator glow of Luminara's Knight went dark as Barriss removed it from the board.

Her master smiled. This was concerning.

Luminara's fingers brushed the unassuming smuggler that had been hovering behind a pawn since the first three opening moves, and Barriss dropped her head into her hands.

“Stalemate,” her master announced, sliding the smuggler into position and successfully pinning Barriss' Commander, boxed in on all sides but the threatened diagonal by her own undeployed troops. Luminara looked amused. “Are you feeling all right, Barriss?”

Barriss winced. “I'm sorry, Master.”

She always missed smugglers. Just like their real-life inspiration they required lateral thinking, never attacked head-on, and found holes in defensive lines that were designed to hold off attacks from the front and sides. They tricked people into seeing what they expected before moving in for the kill. It was a weakness Luminara was training her to work on through these sessions.

Luckily, her master didn't seem disappointed with her performance. She sat back and rested her weight on one arm of the chair, taking a sip of water and relaxing as Barriss reset the board.

“Where did you go wrong, padawan?” she asked calmly, as always.

Barriss grimaced as she set her master's line of pawns back in place. “I let myself be distracted,” she said apologetically.

Luminara raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”

Barriss brought the left-hand droid that had caused her so much trouble back in line. “I lost sight of the true objective. I was so focused on figuring out what the Knight was doing that I allowed myself to forget for a single move that the purpose of the game is to defend the Commander. If I had concentrated more on potential threats to my Commander, I might have seen the danger in the smuggler's position.”

“Yes,” agreed her master. “And now, answer the question.”

Barriss blinked. “Master?”

“Where did you go wrong?”

“I—oh.” Barriss frowned, trying to remember the position of the pieces. “I moved my droid out of position...” She trailed off as Luminara shook her head. Had there been a move even before that, one more foolish? Perhaps that one tentative right-sector pawn had been a waste of valuable time...

Luminara's eyes softened. “You doubted your instincts, padawan.”

Barriss stared at her.

Her master straightened, folding her arms on the edge of the table. “The Knight sacrifice. You hesitated for very close to five minutes, Barriss. You knew it was too obviously a ploy, yet you finally took the move anyway. Why?”

There was silence for a minute as Barriss considered it.

“I don't know,” she finally admitted. To her surprise, Luminara looked pleased with the answer.

“One more game today, I think,” she said. A tap to the side of the board and their pieces shimmered, swapping colors so that Barriss now controlled the rust-red invading troops and her master's pieces were the dove grey of the defenders. “When you're ready, Barriss.”

Barriss considered her options, and half a minute later her Commander's pawn began the charge.

* * *

They were four moves into the game, and Barriss was suspicious again.

They had a pair of pawns in standoff, two smugglers facing off but on opposite-colored diagonals and thus unwilling to engage, and a droid unit each hovering on opposite corners of the field. Every move Barriss had made in her opener, Luminara was mirroring.

It was paranoia-inducing, to say the least.

Several cautious advances later, Barriss finally offered up a pawn to draw her master into action. It was captured instantly, but freed her from the standoff in her Commander line. She took the opportunity to advance, and tried to remind herself that this wasn't a real battle as Luminara's left-hand droid slid into position behind that one isolated pawn.

She paused, and examined the board.

“Take your time,” her master said quietly.

A single move by that one smuggler taunting its twin near Barriss' left hand would put it in a position to threaten her Commander. As it stood, it was blocked by a single brave pawn, defended from capture by a brother to its left and behind. She made a mental note to keep them there and safe, at least until the smuggler moved. She'd very nearly thrown away the safeguard to carelessly capture one of Luminara's pawns; that was a mistake she didn't intend to make again.

Well, it wasn't as if _her_ smuggler was doing any good glaring impotently at her master's...

The next few moves were cautious but unremarkable. It was a very comfortable atmosphere, for all Barriss' intent focus on the board. Sunlight streamed in through the blinds and threw bars across the floor, the window was cracked just enough to let in a breeze from the courtyard outside, and the little alcove they were making use of was pleasantly quiet.

It would have been very easy to let herself become drowsy and careless. Barriss took a drink of water and let her Commander take a single step to eliminate an enemy droid unit that threatened her Knight.

Calmly, Luminara's lurking pawn stepped forward to capture the lone soldier that had been standing guard against an incursion by the smuggler.

Barriss, who had been growing somewhat fond of the little pawn, was almost personally offended. She was on the verge of sending the second pawn out to avenge it—or, in actuality, to ensure the route was still blocked, but she could be forgiven for adding a bit of narrative—when Luminara cleared her throat.

“Crossfire,” she warned Barriss, nodding at the red Commander. Who, having moved a place to the diagonal in taking out the droid, was suddenly no longer covered by the pawn she'd just lost or blocked by the grey pawn that had just captured hers. Sloppy.

Barriss could have moved it back, but her lines were advancing quickly and caution stayed her hand; she didn't like the prospect of having her Commander pinned down again, this time in the open with no immediate safeguard. She nudged it further along its current diagonal, her lost pawn's guardian was captured and instantly avenged by a waiting smuggler, and the game resumed.

Barriss was losing troops rapidly. She'd managed to push her right-hand droid unit almost to her master's Commander; rather than expose it in capturing the droid Luminara Force-leapt, pulling the bulkhead from the edge of the board and tucking her Commander behind it with a pair of pawns as cover but allowing Barriss to take her Knight.

There was an unexpected lull as Luminara considered the battlefield. Barriss took advantage of the opportunity to see if she could do anything at all with her droid unit now. Luminara's bulkhead could take it easily, but it would mean abandoning the barricade she'd created around her Commander; the droid itself, Barriss was forced to conclude, was not terribly useful anymore in its current position and any strong location would take several moves to find. She would undoubtedly be blocked before she could maneuver it anywhere effective...

“You've improved over the last year, Barriss.”

Barriss looked up in surprise. “Thank you, Master.”

Luminara inclined her head, eyes shining with restrained humor, and her Force-damned smuggler shot across the board to hover one space away from Barriss' Commander, along its own diagonal. Barriss twitched.

“Your Commander is in crossfire,” her master observed.

“I noticed,” muttered Barriss. She poked her Commander at the smuggler that had been dogging it for so long and went to remove it from the board.

Luminara cleared her throat. Barriss looked up to find her shaking her head.

“Is there—oh.” Barriss followed her master's gaze to the bulkhead she had dismissed upon resigning herself to losing her droid to it. She hadn't realized it had a clear line to the smuggler she'd just tried to capture, and hastily replaced the pieces. “Why are they called bulkheads, anyway?” she said, perhaps more irritably than intended. “Bulkheads don't move. Not independently, at least.” She thought about it for a moment. “Unless something's gone very wrong.”

Luminara gave a slight laugh. “I have to agree with you, Barriss. I believe I once suggested 'snipers' as a better alternative.”

Barriss perked up slightly. “Effective over long distances as long as they have a straight line of sight?”

“Indeed. However, I appear to have been overruled by the galaxy at large. As unlikely as it may seem, a bulkhead has managed to catch your Commander in crossfire.”

Reassured by her master's teasing, Barriss forced herself to relax. _It's only a game._ None of her other troops had a good line on the smuggler—she'd failed to develop many of them, a mistake she suspected she was about to pay for—so her Commander sidestepped delicately instead, if only as a formality. A few moves later Luminara predictably had her in crossfire again, this time with a droid.

Barriss sighed and tapped her Commander, shutting down its indicator light.

She felt much better about this loss, at least. Luminara had made it very clear to her in the last year of being her padawan that these were lessons, not competitions. Barriss was just short of thirteen years old. She wasn't expected to defeat her master every time, or even often.

“You surrender.” Luminara's voice was carefully neutral.

“Yes, Master.”

“You realize there's no stalemate yet.”

Barriss folded her hands in her lap. “I'm not too proud to admit when I'm defeated, Master. I have a losing board.”

A single eyebrow quirked. “Do you really.”

Barriss looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“Have I said anything?” Her master sounded innocently confused. “I only asked if you were absolutely certain you have no choice but to surrender.”

Frowning, Barriss hesitantly reached out and brought her Commander back into play. She only had one option to move, and she took it. Luminara's droid retreated instantly, but Barriss wasn't foolish enough to be reassured by it. Droids were more dangerous at that distance. Her Commander was too far away to touch them, and their strength was ranged. Up close they were blaster fodder. And now she was exposed alone in the middle of the board.

What good could possibly come of this? Any move her Commander made would postpone the inevitable at best...

Luminara's voice broke her concentration.

“Where are you looking, Barriss?”

It was a good reminder. Luminara was her teacher, not her opponent. So Barriss answered honestly.

“I can't see any move that places my Commander in a better strategic position.”

“Nor can I. And what of it?”

Barriss felt very stupid as she stopped staring intently at her Commander and began looking back over her other pieces. She still had a smuggler, two bulkheads however nonsensical the name was, both droids...

Her eyes lit up. That one faithful droid unit was still stuck behind enemy lines, and now—

“Well spotted, padawan,” Luminara praised her as she removed her master's captured droid from the field. “Never underestimate the value of any resource you may have. A single pawn can make the difference.”

“Yes, Master.” That was a lesson Barriss had learned very well already. Luminara had a gift for arranging the board however she wanted it, and several times had patiently corralled Barriss into scenarios that were inescapable if she neglected to utilize a specific kind of troop to the best of its ability. Pawns and the value of even the most unassuming ally had been long, grueling lessons she would not soon be able to forget.

Perhaps today's focus was on her droids. From here she could move to take out the Commander's bulkhead...

Almost before she had time to complete the thought, Luminara's smuggler swept out lazily and captured the droid.

“Crossfire,” Barriss sighed at the same time her master said it. Her Commander hobbled once more out of harm's way and toward the enemy line.

“Not a sustainable strategy,” her master pointed out. She was right, of course—one more space forward and Barriss would be placing her own Commander in crossfire willingly, which was instant forfeit. But Barriss only had eight options, and six of them were currently under fire from either an inexplicably animated bulkhead or her master's smugglers. So far as Barriss could tell, moving straight forward was less risky than moving right on the diagonal.

It left her more possibilities for retreat if, for example, Luminara's Commander-side bulkhead suddenly lurched halfway across the battlefield. As it had just done. It mercifully blocked one smuggler's line of sight, and Barriss ducked back to her previous position.

So Luminara wanted her in this spot. What was so special about it? What was she supposed to be seeing? For a moment her heart leapt as she realized she still had an unharried smuggler—but it was on the wrong diagonal from her master's Commander, with no way to drive or bait the target into a better position...

And then, very quickly, it was over. A grey pawn forced crossfire. She dodged down and to the right back, toward her own lines in the hope of reinforcements; but none of them had time to move before the bulkhead closed in again. Her Commander went dark of its own accord as it finally went down in the combined crossfire of a pawn, two smugglers, and a very angry wall.

Barriss realized she was slightly out of breath as Luminara pressed a control on the side of the board and all the indicator lights remaining on the board faded.

“ _That_ ,” she said, “Was well fought, padawan.”

Barriss let out a short, frustrated sigh. “I tried, Master.”

Luminara raised her eyebrows. “Tried? You drew me to the end, Barriss. You did well.”

Barriss shook her head sharply. “Will you tell me where I went wrong?”

Luminara rested her arms on the table again, and Barriss fought the urge to put her head down. This always meant she was going to be led gently into some revelation she hadn't managed to have on her own—usually, one that would be extremely valuable but also embarrassingly obvious after the fact.

“How so, padawan?”

Barriss sat up straighter. She'd learned more from her teacher in the past year than she'd ever imagined; if Luminara needed to guide her into learning something else, she wanted to do her best to get there. “After the fourth crossfire, Master,” she said. “What way did you see out of the situation? I tried, but I couldn't find it.”

“I see,” said Luminara. “There wasn't one.”

Barriss stared at her.

“I'm sorry?”

“There was no way to victory from that position,” her master repeated evenly. “Not unless I did something exceedingly foolish, that is, and you would hardly thank me for condescending to you by letting you win in such a fashion.”

“It might be nice sometimes, Master,” she said honestly. That made Luminara laugh.

“You'll earn your share of victories, Barriss,” Luminara assured her. “Today was not going to be one of them.”

Barriss frowned. “Then why not let me surrender? If this were a real battle lives would have been wasted for my stubbornness.”

“Quite.” Luminara inclined her head. “And, in a real battle as in our games, I would ordinarily advise against such last stands. Better to surrender and spare those who depend on your judgment. Live to escape, and, if necessary, fight another day.” Barriss opened her mouth to ask for a better explanation, but stopped when Luminara lifted a hand. “You asked why I led you into refusing to surrender.”

Barriss bit down on her frustration and inclined her head. “Yes, Master. If you saw no way out of the trap, what was the point in my dragging it out to its conclusion instead of surrendering when I realized my position was untenable?”

Her master's smile didn't disappear, but it suddenly turned very sad.

“Because, Barriss,” she said softly, “One day your position will seem untenable, and you will not have the option to surrender gracefully.”

Barriss had intended to protest, no matter what her master said, that fighting a losing battle for the sake of it was a waste of time. The words stuttered out of her mind now. Luminara was watching her for a reaction; after a moment of silence, she nodded as if Barriss had said something after all.

“I will never counsel you to fight a battle past its end for the sake of fighting,” she said. “In almost every situation, it is better to admit when you have lost and not allow your emotions to sway your judgment—no matter what price you have already paid, because the past cannot be undone and its pain must not be allowed to dictate the future of those who are still alive.”

“Yes, Master,” Barriss whispered. She knew that. They'd talked about it dozens of times.

Luminara was still watching her. “But sometimes, either morally or because the option is not given, you cannot surrender. Sometimes a final stand is inevitable, but I would not have you train yourself to believe you are incapable of surviving poor odds. I would not have you train yourself not to _try_. Search until the end for a new solution—not because you refuse to accept reality, but because you refuse to give up hope. Stubbornness is not always a vice.”

Barriss nodded slowly. “Yes, Master.”

It must have shown on her face how shaken she was by the sudden turn in the conversation, because Luminara placed a hand on the table in a reassuring gesture. “Don't worry yourself unduly, Barriss. It was only a strategy game.”

Barriss offered her a tentative smile in return. “Thank you, Master.”

Luminara glanced at the chrono. “I don't wish you keep you from your lunch. If you would like to call a truce in this particular engagement, I shall see you in the north courtyard three hours from now.”

The proper response to that was a polite seated bow before obeying, but Barriss hesitated.

Luminara sat forward, looking concerned. “Is something wrong?”

“No, Master,” she said quickly. That earned her a slightly dubious look.

“Speak your mind, padawan.”

Barriss looked up, a little nervous.

She worried, for a moment, that she was overstepping somehow. She'd been Master Unduli's padawan for less than a year, and while this _was_ a game, they were lessons too. Maybe it was wrong to want to just sit and play through a mock battle for the sake of nothing more than trying to outsmart her master even though she knew she never would. Maybe a good Jedi wouldn't take pleasure in that.

“One more?” she asked, because her master had told her to. “Just for fun?”

Luminara smiled, and started to reset the board.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just for the record: Yeah, 'Force-leap' is Space Chess for castling. I think I made the pieces pretty clear but if anyone needs clarification, let me know! The first thing I said upon realizing that in a world where Jedi exist there's no way 'Knight' isn't the most powerful piece on the board was "Oooh, that is gonna confuse the hell out of people."


End file.
